So you know that I wanted to write: Chile is sweet, not spicy! Which is sooo cheesy, but there it is! Sorry about the wait for an update, but I am having too much fun (finally!) to write on the blog!

We arrived to Chile from Peru into the city of Arica and spent the day hanging out on the beach, eating chacareros, and generally finally relaxing.  IT was great.  Then we headed into a long busride to San Pedro de Atacama which is a desert oasis.  It is a cute town made of adobe houses in the middle of a salt desert.  We stayed in a great, quiet hostel full of older germans who, strangley, all had Mets NY hats! We did a lot of great things in one short day! We went to watch the sunset in el Valle de La Luna which is a national park with sand-dunes.  It was a little tour and we got to see a few key places around, hike up a sand dune, watch the sun reflect on the snowy cordillera de Los Andes, and then…run and jump and roll down the sand dune! That was awesome!

We got back to town and then ran around for food and jumped into another totally amazing tour.  Atacama desert is known for its amazing night sky and we took an astronomical tour in the night.  It was given by this funny French astonomer and his Chilean wife.  First he explained the night sky, how to read it, how to understand what we were seeing, the beautiful Southern Cross and then he set us up with telescopes.  This was the most amazing part! We saw nebulas on Orion´s belt, galaxies, star clusters and SATURN.  We took a picture of saturn with our camara, rings and all!

It was an amazing night! We slept and then hopped on a bus to el Valle de Elqui! That will be part 2!